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Why Mari, Why?


Teriander
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Ok,

 

First, I want to state that I recently purchased 3D-Coat for personal use and don't have a lot of experience with it.  I've also used the 15 day trial of Mari. My question is:

 

What is it about Mari that makes it worth about $1600 MORE than 3D-Coat?  The things I've seen in 3D Coat are quite impressive. Especially UV Unwrapping. That's unbeatable. I haven't gotten into Voxel sculpting or retop yet, but those are features I plan to dig into soon.  So WHY on God's Green Planet would I want to spend so much more for Mari if it's only for painting?  Is 3D coat not capable of Painting objects as well as Mari?  

 

The main reason I ask this is because we will soon purchase a texturing program for our architectural firm and we're debating between 3D-Coat and Mari. Im more for 3D-Coat, but would like others opinion. 

 

Thanks!

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Mari is for super detailed work for the big screen. If you're doing a production with 4k renders and you have models in closeup then you will want to use Mari. It's unsurpassed.

 

But if you are simply an artist and you want a deeply sensual responsive 3d paint program then stick with

 

1. 3D Coat

2. Mudbox

3. C4D (which comes with Bodypaint3D.

4. Zbrush

 

I love 3d Coat the best. It's only competitor is Mudbox for pure pleasure of 3d painting. Mudbox has one thing that 3d Coat doesn't really have yet; functioning Vector Displacement.

 

Simultaneously painting diffuse(color), normal maps ( displacement) and specularity (shine, wetness) in 3d coat is pure badword to me...

 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/830345_425792170835357_433447357_o.jpg

 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/859926_425792244168683_1208973263_o.jpg

 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/857562_425792357502005_1895746300_o.jpg

 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/830244_425792884168619_1744485514_o.jpg

 

Mari is going to handle huge, massive texture files but you'll need a powerful super rig to run it too. Stick with 3D Coat. If Stephen Speilberg calls you up and wants you to produce a raptor for the next version of Jurassic Park though, go out and by a big Xeon rig and a $7000 Nvidia Quadro Pro K6000 and Mari.

Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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Ok,

 

First, I want to state that I recently purchased 3D-Coat for personal use and don't have a lot of experience with it.  I've also used the 15 day trial of Mari. My question is:

 

What is it about Mari that makes it worth about $1600 MORE than 3D-Coat?  The things I've seen in 3D Coat are quite impressive. Especially UV Unwrapping. That's unbeatable. I haven't gotten into Voxel sculpting or retop yet, but those are features I plan to dig into soon.  So WHY on God's Green Planet would I want to spend so much more for Mari if it's only for painting?  Is 3D coat not capable of Painting objects as well as Mari?  

 

The main reason I ask this is because we will soon purchase a texturing program for our architectural firm and we're debating between 3D-Coat and Mari. Im more for 3D-Coat, but would like others opinion. 

 

Thanks!

Mari is a specialty app, not aimed at the broader CG market....obviously. It primarily allows feature film pipelines to paint much larger texture map sizes and with lots and lots of them. On a relatively newer system, especially if you use an Intel i7 (or Xeon) CPU, 3D Coat can handle up to 8k maps fairly well. Haven't tested 16k maps in 3D Coat, as I've never even needed 8k yet, but if price is a concern then 3D Coat is certainly an attractive option. I don't think there is a more full-featured 3D/2D texture painting app...especially if you want top shelf UV layout tools and Ptex capability. My favorite part of the Painting toolset is the live 2D texture editor that is dockable wherever you like in the UI. As you paint on in the 3D viewport, you see live updates in the 2D editor and vice versa.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TI5Hae8BE

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1tu3vyKaao

 

This is a performance comparison (using a 4k map for demonstration purposes) between the previous official release (3.7) and 3D Coat V4. Big boost in performance:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c5THKHI4_o&list=PL0614F2A03AD725CD&index=14

Edited by AbnRanger
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